


Sprezzatura

by Queue



Category: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare
Genre: F/M, Iambic Pentameter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 15:59:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17103638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Queue/pseuds/Queue
Summary: Translations from the Italian:sprezzatura: nonchalance; careful negligence; effortlessness and ease. From Baldassare Castiglione'sIl Cortegiano(The Book of the Courtier), pub. 1528 (Italian), 1561 (English). See Wikipedia entry on the bookhere.Dio mio: my God.Gesù: Jesus.finito: finished (with the male ending "o", rather than the female ending "a"--hence Beatrice's parenthetical, not particularly amused laugh)Per il gusto, sì, non c’è alcuna contabilita. Ma questo e’bastanza: colloquially, "No accounting for taste. But that's enough of that."Solo per esempio: just for examplemaschio: a (somewhat obtrusively non-period) play on words: literally "male" in Italian; aurally analogous to "macho" in Spanish as co-opted by EnglishSignora: MrsDetto ciò: that saidprincipe: princeI ragazzi sa ranno ragazzi: Boys will be boyscertamente: certainlycosì sia: so be itÈ tutto: That's all, that's itTranslations from other languages:Strategos: Greek, meaning military generalprimus inter pares: Latin, meaning first among equals





	Sprezzatura

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vae/gifts).



My uncle tells us Arragon draws near  
with Padua’s brave Benedick in train.

Oh, _Dio mio_. Benedick. I am  
not ready. I need shelter. No: a sword.  
I need a mask. I—no: to fight. To run.  
To dance. To fly at him. To find the best  
and sharpest words to cut him to the quick.  
To make an effortful obeisance  
to custom. To retreat to safety. To  
return his fire. To make him see his loss.  
To salt it. _Gesù_. See:

I loved him once.

They say a maiden’s head—  
her maidenhead, her Hymeneal guard—  
should be that aspect of her corp’r’al form  
she guards most vigilantly from attack,  
from infiltration by the enemies of virtue,  
vanquishers of virgin territory,  
lest they be victorious. 

They say that. 

“They” are fools.  
That head yields once.  
One painful instance, one emphatic phallic feat,  
one stainéd sheet  
(or underskirt or robe or towel—  
one convenient woven surface), and  
that fight is finished, over, done with.  
Future jousts in bed or out of it may bring  
relief, sweet pleasure, children, chafing, boredom:  
but whatever rocky paths or pavéd roads the act of love leads down,  
‘t is fact:  
once torn, one’s maidenhead’s _finito_ (hah).

(Although I’ve heard of whores’ tricks that remake  
or counterfeit that barrier for sale,  
for commerce and enticement.  
_Per il gusto, sì, non c’è alcuna contabilita.  
Ma questo e’bastanza_.) 

By  
contrast, the head she uses (if she can  
resist the pressure _not_ to use it brought  
to bear by those around her who believe  
that, born into a breasted body, she  
must live confined, not just by outside roles  
and rules and expectations, but by her  
own self, must jess and hood her heart  
and, even worse, her mind) for thought and not  
for sport—that head can be attacked  
repeatedly, with cruel and casual ease, by anyone  
for whom she cares who fails to value  
what a woman says or does or is  
beyond her face, her figure, her maternal instinct.  
_Solo per esempio_ :  
by a man she loves, or thinks she does.

I did  
not yield to Signior Mountebank, who mounted me  
with foil already pricking sharp  
(if slender and a trifle… overflexed),  
my virtue (as if that keen quality  
could be contained or reasonably held  
in one small, painful inner part!) with weight  
or import. ‘T was a simpler case: grown bored  
of all my roles—as daughter, cousin, niece,  
an adjunct, not important in herself  
(at least as recognized by others), seen  
as _useful_ , lacking feelings or awareness,  
pulse of longing, need or wetness, want—  
I wanted him. I wanted Benedick.  
His touch, for certain sure: but also his  
quick tongue—its labile touch (ah, yes, _Gesù_ ,  
that artful mouth, those lips and teeth), but, more,  
his words. His bitter humour, vented through  
his cutting utterances; his choleric wit  
that seemed to show intelligence;  
his—name it, Beatrice—his mind. I wanted  
that fierce flame entwined with mine. I thought  
he saw me for myself and, seeing, sought  
my site for sight of someone parallel,  
his counterpart (if not his nonpareil).

Belief is pain. When base geometry  
betrays—when parallel as analogue  
reveals itself to be instead most perpendicular and opposite,  
but only after heart and soul have followed mind  
and body to the wrong conclusion—then  
what mind believes becomes a cranial pain  
without cessation and without relief.

I thought I knew him, in his cups and in  
his flights of fancy, in his sweat and sword  
and words. I thought that he knew me. I thought  
he loved me.

I was wrong.

His sword proved base,  
his spirit likewise: dross, untrue, flawed substance,  
insubstantial, meanly forged, a forgery below the mean.  
He forfeited  
our game of love. He played me false. He loved  
what he believed I was. No, worse: what he  
believed all women must be like, or, if  
sweet nature had not made them so, become  
when set beside (beneath) his manly, _maschio_ strength:  
his queen, his asset, his accessory, his masked subordinate,  
his tertiary character: his lesser-than.  
He hurt my head without good remedy.

Where I believed he saw me for myself  
and knew my very essence (or as much  
thereof as heartstrong caution let me share  
with him), that which he saw with soldier’s eye  
negotiated for itself a compromise  
between reality and comfort,  
tilting towards the latter: he perceived  
the Beatrice I showed him as inferior  
to all his many manly qualities.  
A soldered soldier, Benedick:  
fixed rigid in both prick and mind, unused  
to challenge off the bloody battlefield,  
accustomed to supremacy in his  
own eyes and in those trained on him by men.  
I met him on his ground; I would not yield  
unless he won on merit, not on charm.  
He claimed the candle justified the game  
and then he forfeited and fled, the flame  
left guttering in airless silence, maimed. 

I loved him. Fortune’s fool, I loved,  
not wisely, but too well. I will not err  
that way again. 

That said, here’s brutal truth. (Let it  
be said of Beatrice upon her death:  
she may have fooled her fellows, but she did  
not play that trick upon herself.) I am  
a woman wiser than the wide world wants  
unless “ _Signora_ ” predicates my name.  
Therefore, I have two choices: marriage to  
a man; or that same sacrament, but bonding me  
to God. Take up the first. In truth,  
I would prefer a mate o’er wedlock: tiger,  
swan, a wolf—some species faithful to  
its very bones, without complexities. 

(I’faith, if I could have my deepest heart’s desire,  
I’d spend my life alone and let my mind  
run free. That dream is dust.) 

_Detto ciò_ ,  
I’d take a man of mettle, someone who  
could find his arse with both hands in the dark,  
locate my cunt more easily, and know  
the acts designed to wring most pleasure from  
both sheath and sword. (A bar set low.) Consider:  
Benedick, that bent if not full broken boy,  
may be—he is—a disappointment.  
But: he is, as well, a known and knowing quantity.  
If husband I must take,  
might Padua be the least offensive rake?  
His capabilities suffice to meet  
the practical requirements I have  
for wherewithal to keep a household, to  
placate the lares and penates. He  
possesses passing wit (more pastime than  
profession, but it passes muster, soldier-like).  
He is not godless or without  
some heart (though fainter than fair lady might  
have wished). Don Pedro needs the man in wartime,  
counts on him to warrant his desires  
(political, familial, amorous  
and otherwise) in battle and at peace,  
and needs his sword to ward him safely,  
meaning Ben will be away more often than  
he’s here. 

Oh, yes: I know he has the favor of his _principe_  
above what military strategy requires.  
_Strategos_ milord’s deep strata plumbs. ‘T is well.  
I wish him pleasure of those earthy depths.  
Long may that favor wave from Pedro’s lance.  
Long may Ben’s length bemuse the Don; long may  
he keep Signior Mountanto on his staff,  
stuffed with all of those virtues he desires  
in any way he feels it necess’ry.  
I do not grudge those gentlemen (however  
otherwise than gently they comport  
themselves) their pleasures. _I ragazzi sa_  
_ranno ragazzi_. I have something deeper  
to resolve than how men play their wartime games.  
That fleshly faith, that sere monogamy  
of intercourse, that idea  
of precious ideal love inherent in  
a single person, thus idolatrously  
singling out one body in defiance  
of life’s well-informed realities:  
that faith I will not ask for. More: that faith  
I do not want. I’ve learned that lesson.  
Benedick’s to thank for that: his foul play in our past  
taught me that sauces served o’er gander can  
be equally—and tastefully (o cath‘lic tastes)—  
the provenance of goose, with fowl  
of varied feathers (if discretion’s there).  
The trencherman, once proven a gourmand,  
cannot in conscience bar home’s lover from  
likewise indulging (if indeed he needs  
to know of every banquet held while he  
hares arrogantly off with Arragon  
as, _certamente_ , I say he does not).

So: Benedick has courage, bodily—  
and bawdy, too, as I have had occasion  
to experience. His body pleases me  
acceptably, his face the same,  
and well I know my own of each suits him  
(at least the little head). In sum: I might  
be willing to take on his humours.  
Under certain circumstances. If I set  
the terms. If my term limits serve as governors  
to his desires most terminal  
(his closure—having gone, his coming;  
having come, his swift departure). And if I,  
once burned, remember this: the body’s heat  
suffices; neither heart nor mind need warmth  
from Benedick this time around. The man  
will fill those needs my twice-shy self admits  
but get no closer to the core of Beatrice  
than soap gets to the viscera.  
Oh, yes: I’ll have his tattered book (his fist  
of merry tales, fourscore and more below  
that famous Hundred) in my library  
for casual rereading. But he will  
not have encyclopedic access to  
my volumes of experience and thought.  
I will not give away my pow’r—essential Bea,  
soul, spirit, but above all else,  
my mind, the locus of my strength—to him  
or anyone outside myself again.  
Instead, I’ll show a comp’ny face, all smiles  
(and baréd teeth), defending my sore heart,  
and, in so doing, fool my Benedick.  
He’ll think me smitten, not the smiter, and  
will idolize me in accord with that  
self-satisfied misapprehension. 

Thus  
I will be _primus inter pares_ , even if  
that equal nature’s known to me  
alone. I will that satisfaction have  
from Benedick: in playing ideal wife  
I’ll be myself and be his lodestar both  
(magnetic north, encompassing his life).

If not, _così sia_ : I’ll take the second choice  
and make it mine. I speak the plainest truth:  
I’ll get me to a nunnery  
and rule God’s world instead.  
_È tutto_ , Bea.

**Author's Note:**

> Translations from the Italian:  
> 
> 
> * _sprezzatura_ : nonchalance; careful negligence; effortlessness and ease. From Baldassare Castiglione's _Il Cortegiano_ ( _The Book of the Courtier_ ), pub. 1528 (Italian), 1561 (English). See Wikipedia entry on the book [here.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Courtier)  
> 
> *  _Dio mio_ : my God.  
> 
> *  _Gesù_ : Jesus.  
> 
> *  _finito_ : finished (with the male ending "o", rather than the female ending "a"--hence Beatrice's parenthetical, not particularly amused laugh)  
> 
> *  _Per il gusto, sì, non c’è alcuna contabilita. Ma questo e’bastanza_ : colloquially, "No accounting for taste. But that's enough of that."  
> 
> *  _Solo per esempio_ : just for example  
> 
> *  _maschio_ : a (somewhat obtrusively non-period) play on words: literally "male" in Italian; aurally analogous to "macho" in Spanish as co-opted by English  
> 
> *  _Signora_ : Mrs  
> 
> *  _Detto ciò_ : that said  
> 
> *  _principe_ : prince  
> 
> *  _I ragazzi sa ranno ragazzi_ : Boys will be boys  
> 
> *  _certamente_ : certainly  
> 
> *  _così sia_ : so be it  
> 
> *  _È tutto_ : That's all, that's it
> 
>  
> 
> Translations from other languages:  
> 
> 
> * _Strategos_ : Greek, meaning military general  
> 
> *  _primus inter pares_ : Latin, meaning first among equals


End file.
